Care and Renewables Hub

The Brief

Mediascape is proud to have played a part in the South of Scotland Skills & Learning Network Programme. This was an ambitious £6.6million project designed to create a digital learning platform and infrastructure, providing access to learning opportunities for businesses, schools and college pupils, irrespective of location. 

Challenges

The challenge was to link the main STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) teaching hubs located in college campuses in Dumfries, Stranraer, Galashiels and Hawick. These would then be connected to multiple “spoke” sites throughout the region, including schools, community hubs and private businesses. This would bring learning and teaching to the regions, all at the press of a button.

Mediascape was approached to design, supply and install Audio-Visual systems that would help to facilitate this connectivity across each of the sites.

Solutions

A central part of the project was the new Care and Renewables Hub and Healthcare Facility at Dumfries and Galloway College. This included a simulated care home in which we added multiple AV teaching technologies, video conferencing and remote collaboration facilities. Our main priority was to create flexibility. We did that by ensuring that all sources could be sent to all displays.

Teaching rooms were based on 86” interactive touch displays with video conferencing, tracking cameras, wireless connectivity and full AV control of facilities. The teaching room pictured has a neighbouring twin classroom.

When the partition opens between them it becomes one large, integrated teaching and video conferencing space. Of course, in keeping with our principle of flexibility, a lecturer can link to live images from the camera streams elsewhere in the facility, too, such as checking up on Jack and Vera, also pictured.

As well as the simulated living room, there is a full house mock-up with cameras and microphones throughout, all of which can be displayed throughout the various teaching facilities and be streamed externally.

Student Learning Pods are designed for small teams of students placed around the Dementia Teaching Facility allowing for the sharing of the main teaching content or local student content with wireless collaboration.

Throughout the facility there are various digital signage points, including for the displays of energy use statistics from the top-drawer renewable technologies employed by Dumfries and Galloway College.

Multiple Spoke Sites included 86” Interactive displays, electronically height-adjustable floor-wall stands and video conferencing with microphone arrays. Schools, community hubs, private companies and even a care home have been brought into this connected network, truly showing the inclusiveness of this project.

Featured Products

The Renewables Hub and Care Home Teaching Facilities included: 

• AV/IP
• Video wall display
• Interactive displays
• Digital signage
• Video cameras and audio throughout for remote teaching, recording and streaming of content – these are able to send any source to any display for flexible teaching in the facility

Teaching rooms:

• 86” interactive displays with video conferencing
• Tracking cameras
• Wireless connectivity and collaboration
• Full AV control of facilities

Main brands used:

• NEC displays
• TV One video wall processing
• Extron switching and control
• Wyrestorm routing/AV/IP
• Clevertouch interactive displays
• Lab Gruppen amplification
• Tannoy speakers
• DataVideo streaming
• Kramer wireless casting
• Loxit motorised brackets
• Unicol fixed brackets
• Video conferencing on Vscene platform by Ajenta with Nureva HDL300

Outcomes

William Currie, Head of Corporate Services at Dumfries and Galloway College had this to say about working with Mediascape on the project:

For the Mediascape team, this project presented an excellent opportunity to create a truly connected and collaborative AV setup across multiple sites, as well as providing a solution that used many different pieces of technology working in unison to deliver a cohesive end-to-end user experience.

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